


strings of gold

by theredhoodie



Series: little slice of el rey [4]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Married Life, Polygamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:19:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2576255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not conventional, but, like they both know, nothing for them ever will be, not when they are a trio instead of a pair. And yet Kate still finds a way to make both of them feel like they mean the world to her, because they do both mean the world to her, apart and combined. It is a mathematical impossibility, but it is the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	strings of gold

**Author's Note:**

> I know this isn't entirely OT3, but it's necessary. I've been prodded into making a Seth/Kate centric piece of this world, so I'm sure that will happen again soon.

It is entirely possible Kate's spent the last hour balancing things on her stomach. Everything from a bowl of cereal to a can of soda to a plate of apple slices drenched in sugar. She has her feet propped up on the living room on the coffee table and she's been watching television comedy series marathons all morning.

"Doin' alright there, babe?" Seth asks, standing in front of the television and blocking her view.

Kate raises her eyebrows and licks some sugar off her fingers. "Yeah. What's up?"

Seth shrugs. "Nothing. What's up here? You, uh, need anything else?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, I think I'm—oh! Actually, could you go out and buy me some food?"

"More food?"

Kate blinks. "I'm hungry."

"I don't see how. You've been eating all morning." Seth, of course, immediately regrets his choice of words. Kate just stares at him silently. "I mean, sure, what do you want me to get?"

She turns her eyes skyward just as Richie comes through the door. He actually has been working almost every day for the past three months. A lot of that had to do with the absurd fight between the brothers a week into the three of them living together.

Kate had come home at the tail end of it from a day teaching kids how to write compound sentences in English. She heard it before she even got into the apartment and would have pried them apart if it weren't for her being exhausted. Instead, she just yelled at them louder than they were yelling—quite a feat, but not impossible. Richie left for two days, arriving home disheveled but employed.

Seth's attention snaps to the door, but the tension in his shoulders falls when his brother steps through. Kate grabs hold of the plate balancing precariously on her belly and cranes her neck to see around the couch.

"How was work?" she asks, before turning back to Seth, who hasn't moved from his spot in front of the television set.

"It was work," Richie says, which is his usual response.

"Great, look, Richie's already got his shoes on, send him out for your food," Seth says, tossing a hand in Richie's direction.

Kate shakes her head. "Nope. Richie has to stay here. I need him for something."

It has been many years since the brothers have lived under the same roof before they got to this place. They are both still readjusting. Kate thinks that her time is pretty evenly split between them, and that will become even truer once she has a baby to take care of and time off of work.

"Of course you do," Seth says, shaking his head and leaning down to give her a chaste kiss before moving around the back of the couch to their pile of shoes by the door.

Kate turns her attention back to the TV, even though she missed the past few minutes of the show. She shrugs and crunches down on her last apple slice, hearing the front door open again.

"What do you want?" Seth asks a moment later, just as Richie rounds the couch and spots her using her belly as a table.

"What are you doing?" Richie asks.

Kate looks up at him innocently. "What's it look like? I have a built in shelf, I may as well use it." She flashes him a smile. "I want some pickles. Dill ones. And horchata. Lots of it."

"Horchata," Seth echoes.

"Yes, please," Kate adds.

"You want some, too?" Seth asks Richie, who can never pass up the stuff, even after all these years of having it at his fingertips. Seth calls them both nuts and leaves, closing the door behind them.

"I've got to shower," Richie says as soon as the door is closed. "Can your thing wait?"

"Thing? Oh right, yeah, it can wait," Kate says, eyes intent on the screen. She blames Richie. She never liked TV before she started spending so much time with him as of late.

He disappears and just as the episode is ending, she hears the shower start up. Forcing herself up, she takes her empty plate and tosses it in the kitchen, leaving the television on as she pads around the apartment. She walks down the hall and shoves her way through one of her drawers in Seth's room. She has clothes and  _things_  in both boys' rooms, to keep the balance.

Once she finds what she's looking for, she hides it in her fist and walks down the hall. She pauses at the closed door next to Richie's room and pushes it open. They started gathering baby stuff long before they left the smaller apartment. The nursery here is the smallest bedroom, but it is still bigger than the bedroom back in Seth and Kate's old apartment. There is a crib and a changing station and a little chest of drawers and a pile of soft toys in the corner, with a chair next to it that Kate had seen one day and begged Seth to buy for her because it was  _so_  comfortable. The walls are painted light blue, even though they aren't supposed to paint anything. Kate refuses to have a baby growing up in a room with white walls and they will just paint over it if they ever move out of this place.

She rests her left arm over her stomach, keeping her fingers tight in a fist, and runs her right fingers over the fabric of her shirt, over her baby bump—that Seth calls her baby  _mountain_  because "that is much bigger than a bump, darling".

Before Kate can get too lost in thoughts of  _what if_  that always made her sad, she pushes herself away from the doorway, leaving it cracked open, and returns to sit on one of the two couches in the living room.

Richie showers fast and arrives in front of her sans glasses and with his hair slicked back with only water. "Okay, what do you need?" he asks.

She stands up and squints up at him. "You need to put your glasses on," she tells him.

"Why?"

"Because you're gonna want to see this."

"I can still see without my glasses, y'know."

Kate sighs. "I know, but…just go get your glasses, please."

He blinks and lets out a little huff of air through his nose before he secedes and goes down the hall to fetch his glasses. By the time he gets back, Kate's on her feet, hands clasped in front of her.

"If I get stuck on the floor, will you help me up?" she asks out of the blue when he stops in front of her.

Richie tilts his head. "Uh…yes."

She nods once. "Good, you should sit down," she suggests, but it's much more of a command than either of them will admit. Richie does, however, sit on the other couch and watches Kate not-so-gracefully get down on the floor. She scoots forward on her knees until she's in front of him before she settles back on her heels. "I always pictured this would be a lot more romantic, but," she glances down and brushes off some sugar granules from her shirt, "I don't think you'll mind."

"Kate, what are you talking about?" Richie asks, sitting forward and looking down at her.

She takes in a deep breath, lifting her head with closed eyes, and opening them when she lets the air out of her lungs. "I really don't know why I haven't done this before, I feel terrible about it, actually," she goes on. "But that may just be my hormones acting up. It's kinda hard to tell these days." She pauses and licks her lips, moving her fingers around whatever she's been hiding in her palm for the past ten minutes. "We all know that I'm married to Seth, legally and all that."

"Yeah," Richie says with a nod, shifting a little on the cushions at the mention. He doesn't mind it. He knows that the band on Kate's finger is more than just a promise to his brother. The three of them are so unconventional that it is only right that their relationship will be equally as difficult to explain to the outside world. So they choose not to.

"Well, I wouldn't say it's the only reason I married him and not you, but since you sort of disappeared for those months—" He sighs and sits back heavily against the couch. Kate reaches forward and puts her unoccupied hand over his knee. "—it just happened that way. And I know I don't have to explain any of this to you, that all of us are just supposed to  _get it_ , but some things are better heard than left unsaid."

Richie looks down at her small hand clasped over his jeans and then to her face. She's still thin, but her face has decided to round out with some baby weight and she looks younger than she has in years, like she's seventeen again.

"I love you," she says, pushing herself a little higher on her knees. "And it never felt right having you not living with me and Seth, but I know you're not used to settling down, and fitting into this life here is hard for you."

"Kate…"

"Richie," she counters, raising her eyebrows at him. "You have no idea how happy I am that you're here all the time and that you're trying. Really. Even though that's not the only reason why I'm doing this." She moves her hand from his knee and holds it palm up. "Give me your hand," she says, waiting for him to hold out his hand over hers. His is so much larger than hers that it dwarfs it, completely hiding her fingers under just his palm. "I don't want you to think that I don't love you as much as Seth or that you have to fight for my affection. I won't put a limit on how much time I spend with either of you, and I hope that one of me is enough…"

"Kate, you know that you're all we need," he says, which is rare for him, to use the  _we_. Kate has a harder time saying just one or the other, because her love for both brothers is so intertwined that she cannot even think about separating them from each other. But, she knows that the love that the brothers have for her is different for both of them, and their own brotherly affection is influenced by overprotective dedication. Basically, nothing about the three of them is normal, yet they've made it this far.

Kate smiles softly and moves her hand, pressing her palm against his in mid air. "I'm glad you think so," she says. "I can't live without either of you. I hope you know that. You remember what I told you when we were moving in here?"

Richie presses his lips together and nods. "Yeah."

The only flood of panic she felt about him leaving her and Seth was when he left for those few days and came back hungry but with a job. When she and Seth lived together, Richie came and went, but this was supposed to be different. They bought this place so that wouldn't happen. At least, not without notice.

"I still mean it. I need you here, with me. Can you promise you'll stay?" she asks, folding her fingers between his and squeezing.

Richie sits forward a little more and reaches forward with his right hand and takes her chin gently between his index finger and thumb. The afternoon sun has set her into a glow, angelic even. "I promise," he says, moving forward more and leaning down to give her a soft kiss on her pink lips.

She tugs at his left hand and pulls back from the kiss, shaking her head, her eyes dancing with light. "You're supposed to let me finish," she says, her cheeks flushed.

"You're not finished?" he asks, sitting back a little more.

"No," she says, her eyes moving down to his hand, which she tugs forward until his wrist is resting against his knee and her hand falls away. "And now you've made me all nervous."

"I'm sorry," he says, though he doesn't sound sorry.

Kate glances up at him and shakes her head in disbelief before she pushes herself onto her knees and takes his hand in both of her hands, the tips of her fingers running over his skin. "I don't want you to feel that you belong any less in this family than anyone else, Richie," she says softly, moving the cool piece of metal from her palm to her fingertips. "So this is for you."

She slides a ring on his finger. It's gold like hers, nothing fancy, but she's been saving up for a while for it. He lifts the hand and the metal catches in the sunlight. Kate leans against the bottom of the couch, propping her elbows up on his knees, her eyes trained on his face. "So? What do you think? Is it too much? I almost feel like it's too late to give it to you. I just about talked myself out of it before I realized that time really shouldn't matter and I want you to have something to remind you that you're mine and I'm yours, too," she finishes in a burst.

Richie looks from the ring, that tiny circle of metal that held more weight than he realized before this very moment. It's not conventional, but, like they both know, nothing for them ever will be, not when they are a trio instead of a pair. And yet Kate still finds a way to make both of them feel like they mean the world to her, because they do both mean the world to her, apart and combined. It is a mathematical impossibility, but it is the truth.

"Hmm? What do you think?" Kate prods once the silence slips by. Normally they don't mind silence, but this is different. She lifts her hand, where her own ring adorns her finger, and presses it against his palm. "We match."

"Thank you," Richie says finally, his eyes sliding to Kate's. She smiles. It lights up her entire face and warms the depths of her eyes. She slides her fingers between his, the metal of their rings scraping together lightly.

"You're welcome, Richie," she says simply, because it is such a Richie thing to do, to  _thank you_  for something that should have happened years ago.


End file.
